


Maiden, Mother, Crone

by MotherLilith



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Angst, Daddy Issues, Elf Culture & Customs, Elves, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fellowship of the Ring, Good versus Evil, Magic, POV Alternating, POV Arwen Undómiel, POV Female Character, POV Multiple, Past Violence, Past hurt, Rivendell | Imladris, Threats of Violence, tom bombadil is an eldritch horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24391150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherLilith/pseuds/MotherLilith
Summary: LotR POV from the perspectives of Arwen, Galadriel and Eowyn.
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel/Arwen Undómiel
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Maiden, Mother, Crone

The leaves of Rivendell were beginning to change, and Arwen sensed that there was something in the air that suggested the end of summer. Not a chill in the night, or a frost in the hours before sunrise, but a sense that the cup of life that had brimmed full and green as the flowers bloomed, was slowly being emptied. Soon the sweet warmth of summer would give way to the crispness of autumn, and the nights would draw longer as the days shortened. In Rivendell the seasons were felt less strongly than in the land outside its borders, and as Arwen walked further out she felt the flow of the sun and moon tides that held sway over the land growing stronger.

Reaching out, her fingers brushed the edge of an oak leaf and felt it come away in her hand. As the leaves began to fall, she knew that the age of the elves was coming to an end. But this was no natural close. All those who dwelled in Rivendell, and those in Lothlorien too, felt the long shadow in the east falling over them. Already it had fallen over the Woodland Realm, known now to men as Mirkwood, for the fell beasts that had invaded its forests. How, she wondered, had the Lord Thranduil let that come to pass? How now could his people endure, in the shadow of that darkness? Better they should flee to the West and join their kin in Lorien or Rivendell. But when the shadow fell over them too, where then could they turn? There was only one path remaining to them, and it led to the Grey Havens.

Already, Arwen knew, the ships were being made ready to sail to the Undying Lands. _When the time comes my father will command me to leave with them_ , Arwen thought. _But I will not. Not while the one I love remains behind_.

She was startled then by the sound of an alarmed bird call, and her hand went to the knife that hung from her belt. She went still, letting her eyes dart between the trees and bushes. What creature had frightened them so? Something in the trees or on the wing? But she saw nothing, felt no evil presence. And then she heard a bird reply to the first, and its call was light and warbling and spoke of no danger. The leaves around her fluttered gently in the late-summer breeze and she took a breath, relaxing her stance. _I should not expect danger at every turn when I am still within the borders of Rivendell_. But still, she could not help it in these times.

Her Lord Elrond would command her to leave in spite of the love she bore for Aragorn. But what did her father remember of love? He himself had made her own mother Celebrian take the final voyage to Valinor.

Her brothers had blamed themselves for their mothers sickness, though it was not their fault that they had come too late. The orcs had caught her party journeying east to Lothian, and her mother had been greatly tormented and suffered many wounds. Even after her body was healed, her mind had grown sick and it seemed no medicine could heal her. She barely recognised her children, calling them instead by the names of her cousins. And her husband, she thought was her father Celeborn, though he had fair hair and Elrond dark. She would grow confused and agitated when any corrected her, and her bodily pains returned to the point that Elrond said he must send her to the Grey Havens.

“Valinor will be peace for her, eternal and everlasting”, he had said to the tearful Arwen. “Here in Rivendell she suffers greatly. Would you have her suffer because you wish her to stay with you?”.

It was a hard thing to say to his daughter, and Arwen in her anger and grief would not hear it.“You want her gone because you are ashamed of her! Because she is a reminder that you failed her!”, she had replied. Elrond had turned away from her then, and she had swept out of the room. Arwen had rode for Lothlorian that day so that she would not have to look upon her father’s face and hate him for what he did.

But all that was long past, and she must focus on what was to come. But of what shape the future would take, she was uncertain. She did not possess the gift of foresight as her father did. For Arwen, the Sight was more akin to a flickering awareness, flashes of possibility that came over her momentarily, and which she failed to recall in their entirety. But she was gifted in other ways and had other means of discovering what was afoot in the wider world.

She sat beneath the great oak that spread its branches wide across the canopy and removed her boots. Closing her eyes, she felt her bare feet on the moss that covered the ground, and down into the cool earth through which the roots of the forest grew in an endless, ever changing labyrinth. To listen in this way was to think as an Ent thought. To feel the breathing of leaves and the coolness of bark, the shedding and deep stillness of winter snows, and then the thaw and melt as the sun returned to rise the sap in the spring. Then the burst of summer life, the fullness of leaves catching the sun, and seeds falling to the earth and the cycle beginning once more. In the earth, the spores of mushrooms carried messages between roots as one would talk to a friend, and the water drunk by roots flowed through dark underground channels to a place where the trees grew wild, and awake as they had been in the ancient times, as the old and fatherless one tending them bade them do so to keep intruders from the borders of his land.

That old ones smiling face swam before her now, with a dark light gleaming in his eyes.

“Little Elf Lady”, he said with a chuckle.

But as she moved to pull away, he caught her with an iron grip and held her in place. _How dare he address me in that way, and grab hold of me with those hands that seem to writhe about, though they hold me fast?_ she thought angrily. _Does he not know who I am?_

_Oh he knows, and does not care,_ a part of her replied.

_Or perhaps_ , she thought, _those are his words in my mind?_ _Out, uncanny creature!_

The ancient being laughed at her confusion, running his fingers through his beard absentmindedly.

“Tell Elrond that Bilbo of the Sire will be in Rivendell before the moon grows dark, and that he must send riders to aid the Hobbit for he has finally grown old”, he commanded.

And at that, Arwen felt the creature’s grip release.

She fled back into the channels of water, through the roots to the place where the trunk met the earth where she had fallen. As she came into her body, she became aware that she was breathing heavily as if she had run far, and she felt how her hands shook when she raised them. There was a mark there, where he had gripped her wrist, though her body had remained within the bounds of Rivendell.

_Such was his power_.

She shuddered at the thought of him. There was darkness in that old creature.

She wondered that he was content to live among the trees of his kingdom in the watery arms of a river maid. She breathed deeply to compose herself once more and combed the leaves free of her hair. In the place she had fallen the leaves around her were dead and withered, where before they had been green. She shook her sleeve over the bruise on her wrist. She would put ointment on it, and it would soon heal.

Now, she must tell her father of the message.

Though she was aware that something was beginning, she had no idea of what would unfold in the times to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Not too sure where this is going, but i am up for the challenge! There will probably be some more explicit stuff like sex and violence later, but i will add content warnings then. I am more interested in telling a story than in Tolkein lore, so i am loosely following the the plot of the films with some reference to the books. If there are any relevant interesting bits of lore that you think i should know about/explore, please let me know!


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